


That Girl Is A Monster

by ObscureReference



Category: Original Work
Genre: All types and kinds, Body Horror, Broken Bones, Character Descriptions, Death, Drabble Collection, Freeform, Gen, Gore, Horror, Monsters, Self-Cannibalism, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2018-07-25 12:45:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 32
Words: 5,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7533304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObscureReference/pseuds/ObscureReference
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of monster girl descriptions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a monster

A swamp girl, a moss girl, a girl with mud layered over mud layered over mud in place of skin, oozing from every inch of her. Dirt under her nails, silt between her toes, a mire girl, a swamp girl, a girl with oil in her teeth. Living in bogs and marshes, camouflaged between rocks and lichen, she waits. Mud and muck, filth and grime, surviving off the castoffs, the leftovers, the thrown away things. Dark slime sloughing off her hulking form, lumbering through the mist of early morning, the sunlight barely reaching the spaces between the brittle trees with roots that snake and twist under the wetlands. Sinking into the soaked ground with every step, murky water lapping at her sides until she slips completely under, concealed by the swirl of dirt swimming in her wake. A hidden girl, a grime girl, a girl on the outskirts. A monster.


	2. gasoline

Slipping right through your fingers, an oil slick girl ready to ignite. A soaked to the bone girl, a drenched in gasoline girl, a one-match-away-from-a-grease-fire girl. Kerosene spit, coal for eyes. So ready to spark, to combust, to consume. Ashy cheeks, smokestacks on her tongue, a grin that could rival a candle's flame on her burnt lips. There's an unlit fireplace where her lungs should be, an entire factory chugging away inside her, blackened organs circulating bucket after bucket of crude oil through her veins and tossing it back out her pores, leaving dark trails on the sidewalk in her wake. She has a flamethrower voice that crackles when she speaks, every vowel another pop of the charred wood in her throat. The gas station nozzle in your hand shudders when she walks by. For good reason.


	3. crybaby

a crybaby girl with acid tears that drip-drop in the rain, the concrete sizzling at her feet as tiny pinprick holes open up with every tear that rolls down her face. tears should be salty, but hers are sour instead, biting, would carve a warpath on anyone else's skin. she could destroy a dam with those tears, could bring a mountain to its knees.

she builds a lake instead, sobbing until there is a fresh hole beneath her soles and the unrelenting rain pools. the hole deepens, the water rises. the rainwater turns to acid with nowhere else to go. and there she is, untouched, at the bottom of the pool. she cries and the water blisters. they say acid rain is a contagious thing.


	4. bubblegum

you see her every day as you get on the bus. she's there, on the corner stop, chewing her bubblegum. every day she's chewing bubblegum. you never see her pull out a pack, but she must have one on her at all times. otherwise you couldn't imagine how she keeps up the habit. you think her jaw must be sore or her muscles worn out from the constant effort, but every day she's sitting at the stop, chewing. she never looks at you. the bus pulls up. her teeth grind, grind, grind.

once, you thought you saw something red drip out of the corner of her mouth. she wiped it away before you could get a good look. it left a crimson stain on her sleeve. you think she must like cherry gum.

lately you've heard some cats have gone missing. your next door neighbor says she can't find her rottweiler. there was a howling outside your window last night that you couldn't place.

you go to bus stop. she chews.


	5. radio

it's late. you listen to the radio.

you always listen to the radio when it's late, and you love it, mostly because you don't have any other way to entertain yourself. you love it a little more now than you did before, though. a few weeks back you found a radio host you really like. her show isn't really about anything in particular, and it's hard to remember what station she broadcasts at, leaving you fiddling with the dial in the dark until her voice suddenly cuts through the night, a saving grace to your otherwise uneventful evening. you listen to her voice more than the words. 

you keep the radio close as you get comfortable. the taste of cinnamon dances on the end of your tongue as you doze. sometimes it feels like she's talking to you specifically. you like that.

it's late. you listen to the radio and let a voice like a lullaby rock you to sleep.

in the morning, when you wake up, there is blood on your pillow. your eardrums throb.


	6. flicker

the overhead light flickers, and you try not to scream. the light flickers, and she's out on the street.

you shake and stand there with your hand on the light switch. she stares up at you through the window, an inky outline against the oil slick shine of the road. nothing ever looks real under the streetlights, you thought. not this late, not at this angle. too wet. too fake. she does not look fake. there is no shortage of lamps on your street, but the light doesn't reach her. more than half of them are out. they weren't out yesterday.

your fridge door is still open like you left it, spilling artificial light onto the kitchen floor, and you can see it blinking out of the corner of your eye. blink. blink. blink. the refrigerator struggling to stay lit. blink. blink. you, too, try very hard not to blink.

the overhead light flickers.


	7. home

"come home with me," you said, and she did, smiling slyly from across the table.

she followed you out of the restaurant and down the street. she followed you into the cab. she followed you back to your apartment. she followed you into the bedroom and you, the idiot, had asked for it all.

she followed you into the bedroom and when you turned around, there had been a monster standing in the doorway. you screamed.

"calm down," she said, and then she bit out your throat.

"come home with me," you'd said, and she had.


	8. mermaid

you thought mermaids were supposed to sing.

maybe that was just sirens. maybe there's no difference. maybe it doesn't matter because you're going to die either way.

she doesn't look like a mermaid you've ever imagined. not even the ones you've thought about in the dead of night, the scary ones, the ones you thought about when your bed was too solid to rock you to sleep like your boat would. horrors lurk in the deep, your mother said, but you've never imagined anything like this.

gray skin, webbed hands, a smile that could swallow a face whole—yours and hers both. maybe that's decay flapping from her lips, maybe it's the remnants of her last meal. you only catch glimpses of her when she pokes her head out of the water to chip another piece of wood off the stern. the dark waves obscure most of her body, and you're not sure you want to see the rest.

the engines are out. there's no wind to catch the sail. she planned this somehow. maybe you're just that unlucky, but she's taking advantage of your helplessness. not like it's hard. she's a born predator. you're the one unfit for sea.

the boat jerks, dips down for a moment before bobbing back up. you're dangerously close to taking on water. she's circling you. another chunk of your boat floats out to sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my tumblr is someobscurereference.tumblr.com and I have a "that girl is a monster" tag
> 
> i take theme suggestions


	9. frog

there is a little girl making faces at you while you wait for the crosswalk light to change. she’s wearing a yellow rain jacket and green galoshes even though it’s a sunny day, and it’s childish, but she’s a child, so you make a face back.

you stick out your tongue. she sticks out hers.

you stick yours out farther. so does she. you cross your eyes. then you uncross them because you can’t believe what you’re seeing.

she sticks out her tongue, out and out and out, until it nearly touches the ground. she wags it at you like a dog’s tail, teasing. her lips curl. nobody else is even looking, and her tongue’s not even the right color anymore, it’s purple, and you shut your mouth so fast you hear a ‘click.’

the girl’s mother leans down and whispers something into her ear, pulling her into the street. the light has changed. the girl’s tongue coils back into her mouth. you stare until they disappear into the crowd. the light turns red.


	10. lighthouse

“wait,” you say and reach out. she slides right through your fingers like a slipstream, her skin turning to mist at your touch—gray, hollow, hallow. she turns and looks at you with eyes that glow like beacons. her hair whips around her head. the ends of her locks are fuzzy, smokey. a breeze barrels in with the north wind, and she’s blown away like the fog thing she is. you leave your hand hovering in the air for longer than you’d like.


	11. file

you’re waiting to get your license renewed, and there should be ten thousand other people here but there’s not. it’s just you, the lady behind the desk, and the girl reading a magazine across from you. you think the woman behind the desk may be asleep. you’re wondering how long is the polite time period to wait before checking.

the girl across from you puts down her magazine, and you weren’t smart enough to bring your own, so you watch her instead. her nails are so finely kept you think they must be fake. they’re painted hot pink, and you enviously wonder how she layered on the nail polish so smoothly. you can never do it that well.

she digs around in her purse and pulls out a nail file, and you’re almost certain you know what she’s about to do right before she sticks the file in her mouth and goes to town. you hear the near sickening grind of her teeth being shaped, watch white flecks of bone powder fall onto her glossy lips. you gasp.

suddenly, she looks up and catches you watching her. it’s no secret; you’re the only other person in the waiting room. you stare, unable to tear yourself away.

she smiles at you, friendly and somehow still all shark teeth, the file poised between her lips. her nails glisten. she takes a lot of pride in how she looks.

you hesitantly smile back.

she goes back to filing.


	12. crown

you’ve thrown up already, you’ve thrown up already, you’re going to throw up again.

there’s a corpse in front of you, and a woman—a creature—a _something_ is digging through its stomach. where its stomach used to be. is, if she hasn’t torn through it with her nails already. you can’t imagine anything resisting the sharp edge of those.

she’s suddenly finished digging around in there when she takes a hold of some organs and pulls them out of the body. (you’re going to throw up.) there may be stomach in there, maybe part of a liver (you’re going to throw up), but she discards all that in favor of the intestines, bloody, gooey, covered in things you can’t name. (you’re going to throw up.) she takes them out more delicately that you imagine those things she calls hands would allow and cuts a strip off. she ties one end to another, fluid and all.  (you’re going to throw up.)

you’ve thrown up already, you’re going to throw up again, and she holds out the crown like an offering.


	13. crack

_crack_ goes the bone in her thumb, snapped just above the joint. it’s the last finger to go, and she extends her arm to observe the way all her other fingers hang crookedly from her hand. she had shattered her pinky with a nearby rock before realizing she liked breaking them manually way better. it took surprisingly little force, but the sounds her bones made are so satisfying. nothing about her hands resemble a normal skeleton now.

she’s out of fingers to snap, so she leans her head back and places two in her mouth. she rolls her tongue around her flesh for a moment, feeling all the bumps and places where the bones press unnaturally against the skin. then she bites down. it’s surprisingly easy to tear through the flesh. and as the blood fills her mouth, she finds her wrecked bones offer little resistance. her teeth saw through the tendons and she swallows. her mouth tastes of iron. there are 27 bones in the human hand and she wants to feel all of them.


	14. crystal

crystalline skin and a body made of gems. she examines herself with the cool, analytical mind of a scientist examining a petri dish, cataloguing the way the light refracts off her shiny shins, her rugged knees. a pretty thing but a jagged thing. a thing that would tear your skin to strips when you reached out to touch it, too fascinated and absorbed in the beauty of her not to try. she’s something that could rival a diamond, but harder, sharper, more polished. everyone sees what they want to see in her—hell, even their own reflections sometimes—but they don’t see the truth until it’s too late.


	15. blunt

she bounces on the balls of her feet, brass knuckles at the ready. she’s blunt on the outside, too blunt for the kind of pain that pierces, and she’s fucking _done._ inside she’s all barbed wire and broken glass, and the crooked wire is curling under her nails. she can’t turn herself inside out but she can take her soft skin and make it hard, can turn that bluntness into the weapon it was meant to be.

she runs her tongue over the pointed tip of the fangs in her mouth and relishes the way they scrape against her tongue. her outside is too smooth but her insides aren’t. anyone who thinks they can pull the wool over her eyes is a fool. she’ll take a bite right out of them. she hopes the wound grows septic.


	16. negative

"you're so negative all the time," you say. "don't you enjoy anything? you're so negative."

fine. _fine_.

that's not true, but you want it to be, so fine, now it is. she's not a person. she's bitter, tasteless. the opposite of positive is negative, and now her body folds in on itself to take up negative space. she had skin, once, and hair, but now she's empty. you wanted it, you got it. she's a black hole. she'll obliterate your atoms, crush them into nothingness like her. there's no color darker than black, no hue that depicts a void. her gravity is all encompassing. all a hole wants to be is bigger. if you enter her orbit, she'll take you down with her.


	17. goodnight

you’re setting your toothbrush down on your dresser because you don’t like the idea of keeping it in the same room as a toilet, your mouth full of mint, when you catch the movement out of the corner of your eye.

you turn, but there’s nothing. you could have sworn you saw some kind of tentacle or tendril or _something_ , but you let it go. you toss your pants into the corner. you pull back the sheets.

something grabs your bare ankle, and you begin to scream.

then you look down and see that it’s not a human hand wrapped around your foot. it _is_ a tentacle. you hadn’t imagined that at all.

“oh,” you say, relaxing. “oh, you scared me. i didn’t know you’d be visiting tonight.”

the limb wrapped around your ankle loosens. it slithers back out of sight under the bed. you think you hear a purr.

“do you need anything?” you ask. the bed doesn’t shake, so you take that as a no. you climb under the covers and get cozy. you turn the lights out.

there’s a monster under your bed, and you tell her, “goodnight.”


	18. lightening

thunder and the smell of burnt ozone herald her arrival. she's all sparks and untapped energy. there's a crackle in the air you hadn't noticed before, and you only halfway imagine the way the atoms dance on your skin. it's dark outside, but she's brilliantly, brilliantly bright. _crackle-pop_ goes the air in your lungs, and you can't make a joke about it because she's taken your breath away. she's glorious. horrifying. it hurts to stare.


	19. sick

the dull pressure of a headache throbs away behind your eyes and sinuses.  you think you have a low-grade fever coming on. it's hard to see straight.

"are you okay?" she asks, and you swear you feel your fever rise at the sound of her voice. your tongue feels dumb and swollen.

you try to say something, and it comes out like a whine. she's blurry in your vision, blurry face, blurry movement. you blame what you see on that, the blurriness. you're not thinking right.

"you poor thing," she says. "you look pathetic. let's put you out of your misery."

the fingers that curl around the nape of your neck feel more like a threat than a comfort.


	20. siren

you're not near the sea, you're not on a boat, you're in a ice cream parlor downtown and her voice is the siren song you've always dreamed of. you're swept away in a melody of honeysuckle and sugar. if lemon drizzle had a feeling, that's how you'd describe the way her voice caresses your cheeks. you're not near the sea, but you swear you could drown in that feeling. you want to.

the shop is empty. you can't tear your eyes away, and her voice never stops. you stand up before you realize what you're doing, but her eyes crinkle like she's pleased. you shiver.

she leads you to the back freezer with a charming smile. you register the exorbitant amount of meat hanging from the hooks at the same time you hear the door click behind you. you turn, but not nearly fast enough. she croons into your ear. you don't even feel the teeth that sink into the flesh above your collarbone. she sighs, pleased, and you're swept away by the sound.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://someobscurereference.tumblr.com/tagged/that-girl-is-a-monster


	21. pottery

she eats pottery.

it’s not the worst thing, as far as habits go. there are worse ways to spend her time. enjoying art is pretty low on the “things not to do” list. it’s a hobby.

sometimes, she goes to the store and browses the china on the shelves. sometimes, she buys a vase or a cup or a plate. sometimes, she goes home and puts the new ceramic in her cabinet. sometimes, she smashes it against the wall. sometimes, she sticks the shards into her mouth and chews.

the pieces taste like clay. they don’t cut her mouth.

it tastes like clay, but it also tastes like art. and sadness. or happiness. or heartache. or elation. or determination, sometimes. like long hours spent with hands in the earth, almost always. there’s an undercurrent of emotion to each bite that she can never replicate. she thinks of it like a special treat, savoring every moment the unique feeling bursts on her tongue until she finally swallows. she’ll never know that feeling again. she only buys plates or vases or cups sometimes. not always. just sometimes. for special occasions.

she eats pottery, sometimes.


	22. apples

you smell apples.

you watch her, and she watches the moon. you sit cross legged on the porch while she crouches in your garden, the grass long enough to cover her shins. you’ve never seen a person sit like that before. she hunches over when the cloud cover thickens and straightens when the moonlight shines brightest. there are no lamps on your street, and you’re in the backyard so the light wouldn’t reach you anyway. despite the moon, it’s dim. despite the darkness, you swear you see something snake its way under her skin. despite your bare trees, the scent of apples is overwhelming.


	23. venus flytrap

she’s bloody, and you can see the white tip of a bone shard poking through her chest, viscera and pink, wet meat glistening on the edges. her stomach is concave, emaciated, and you should feel worse but part of you can only think, _gross._ she’s been here long enough for the grass to start growing over her fingertips. for all intents and purposes, she should be a corpse. however—

while her skin is shrunken and tight around her skeleton, it isn’t decayed. she isn’t rotting. her eyes are closed like she died in peace, and her long hair is splayed out around her head as perfectly as the day she had first laid down. no signs of rot, no carrion birds circling overhead. it a warm day. she’s some kind of medical marvel.

you take a step forward to get a closer look, but a resounding _crack_ freezes you in place. you look down. the ground is solid. you don’t know where the sound came from.

you take another step. _crack!_ this time movement catches your eye, and you look up. you could swear you can see more bone than before.

a third step, and you’re nearly on top of her. the cracks resound then, echoing through the canyon in rapid fire before stopping just as suddenly. the silence feels ominous.

they came from her, you realize. her chest.

you blink, and suddenly you are looking into the open cavity of her chest, her ribs spread like the gaping maw of a beast. her skin has separated neatly, revealing the gleaming bone within. her face is still serene.

that’s not her blood, you realize as you eye the ribs (teeth). that’s not her meat.

another few inches north and up, and you could place your foot directly into her chest. there aren’t any organs standing in your way—that you can see, anyway. around her, you eye the scattered remains of field mice skeletons and one object that previously looked to be stone. now it looks like the remains of someone’s tibia. you know, somehow, that you are not the first to have come here.

you also know, in equal measure, that if you placed your foot into her chest like the small voice in the back of your head is begging you to do, _just to see what happens, of course_ , you’d lose more than just a limb.


	24. paranoia

you live alone. this is a fact.

your paranoia disregards this fact.

your bed is too low to the ground for any human to hide underneath, your closet too thin for a person adequately squeeze inside. your bathroom shower has no curtain, only clear glass. the living room contains a few bar stools and various chairs pressed snugly against the walls. there is no space for anyone but you.

you lay upside down on your bed and idly wonder what it would be like if a hand suddenly wrenched hold of your hair and dragged you down. your reflection in the mirror on the back of the bathroom door stares back at you. the space under your bed is dark but empty.

you hear a noise and cannot help the way your shoulders hunch. your neighbor is watching a movie.

you cover your face with your hands and close your eyes. blood rushes to your face from the gravity of hanging your head over the side of the bed, and you try to focus on that. you cannot help the way your heart skips a beat at every thumping footstep from the tenants above you. 

you berate yourself. you breathe in.

once you’ve calmed down, you peer through the spaces between your fingers just in time to see inhumanly long, pale fingers slide between the gap under your bathroom door.


	25. mirror

A shuffling noise wakes you up, but your room is bare and empty when you look around. You even work up the energy to roll over and check the other side of the bed, even though that takes more energy than you’d like to give at this time of night and ensures you won’t fall back asleep very easily. You roll over anyway.

Like you thought, you’re alone. Which, of course. You remember locking the door earlier.

You go back to sleep.

You wake up five minutes later to the same shuffling, this time accompanied by the sound your fingers make when you pop your knuckles. You haven’t popped your knuckles, though.

You sit up. There’s nothing.

Actually, it’s not completely nothing. There’s you, your dresser, your dresser mirror, and a few boxes you’ve piled up in the corner. You need to unpack.

But for all intents and purposes, it’s nothing.

You lay back down.

There’s a _popcrack_ somewhere above you.

This time you do not move. This time, you crack open your eyes ever so slightly.

In the mirror, a girl with a crooked neck stands over your bed. She cocks her head in a way that’s almost curious, and the movement causes her head to loll to the side disgustingly. Your breath catches.

If this girl is really in the room, you don’t notice her. You only see the mirror. You cannot look away.

In the mirror, her head rolls. _Popcrack._

She reaches for your neck.


	26. cat lady

one of the cats bites a hunk of flesh from a field mouse, and she tastes the matted fur on her tongue, tinged with copper and meat. another cat crouches in the yard, eyes wide as it watches a distracted bird in the long grass, and she feels the eager thrill of the hunt thrum beneath her own skin. somewhere on the roof, at least three cats are bathing in the sun. another feline weaves itself between her legs, content with the contact. she feels the vibrations of its purr low in her own throat. there are others, and every one is a distinct pinprick in her mind. she knows them all.

these cats are “domesticated” the same way she is domesticated, and she is a wild thing.

several miles down the road, a pack of lioness stake out a watering hole. across the sea, a snow leopard encroaches on a wounded sheep while its cubs watch and huddle together for warmth. in her heart she hears the sorrowful cries of the cats tucked away in too-small cages, trapped behind bars. she mourns.

when the group of lions by the hole finish hunting, they will bring the feast to her. she will eat along side them, a queen.


	27. tales

you have heard the tales. you know how this goes.

the glass of the open coffin lid streams a kaleidoscope of colors across her face. the sunshine is warm. she is beautiful.

you have heard the tales. you know how this goes.

the rise and fall of her chest is gentle. you lean down to press your lips against hers.

the rise and fall of her chest is still gentle even as her eyelids fly open and her unearthly pale fingers seize your throat.


	28. traditional

she is the most traditional visage of a ghost you’ve ever seen.

(not that you ever thought you would see a ghost.)

you would say she is beautiful, but you’ve never seen her face, so she might not be. you only ever see her when she’s on the balcony, and you never get any closer. you’ve never been close enough to really see her, but she’s there every night without fail. until the sun rises. you know this because you live across the street.

when you first saw her, you squinted. you were carrying a glass of water to bed. you berated your eyes for playing tricks on you, you mind for not thinking things through. it didn’t mean anything when you couldn’t see her feet touch the ground. it didn’t mean anything when the hem of her dress blended in with the night air. it didn’t mean anything that the hair on her head stayed perfectly still while the streetlights below you wobbled in the harsh wind.

(the fact she was wearing a wedding dress should have been a big tip-off, but you don’t exactly pride yourself on your inference skills.)

when you finally realized what you were looking at, you threw yourself to the floor and ducked behind the couch. your cup of water didn’t shatter on the carpet, but you did make a mess. you ignored it, crawling to the window and peering out the bottom of the glass.

(if only your father could have seen you then, putting all those instincts he had tried to drill into you to use. for a hysterical moment you wondered if he would come back as a ghost too.)

you prayed she wouldn’t curse you, assuming that was a thing ghosts did. you were not the praying type. at the very least, you hoped she would not look at you.

she didn’t. she stared out into the distance from her balcony. you stared at her. she looked like a statue. she didn’t vanish until the sun rose. you went to work the next day with red eyes and blurry vision from the long, anxious night spent awake. you couldn’t convince yourself it was a dream.

she was there the next night. and the next.

eventually, you stopped shaking in fear every time you tried to fall asleep.

(eventually, you stopped looking for new apartments. the rent is cheap here anyway. you’re pretty sure you know why.)

it becomes routine. after the sun sets, she appears on her balcony across the street. you sit in the living room and watch her out of the corner of your eye while you pretend to watch the television.

(you don’t openly stare. not after the first night. you’re always too afraid that she will look back.)

she’s too far away for you to make out the details of face. you know she’s a woman. you know she’s wearing white. you know she’s staring at something that isn’t you.

(the apartment below you? the street? did she die there? is she watching someone? is she watching someone?)

(you’re so glad it isn’t you.)

so you live across the street from a traditional ghost—long white dress, transparent legs, seemingly affected by the world around her. a very traditional ghost.

(not that you ever thought you would see a ghost.)

you get used to it.


	29. ash

she comes not through the chimney but through the floorboards, clawing her way past wood and frozen earth. the wood panels do not creak when she crawls through the cracks. she’s dirty, soot-soaked, leaving ashy footprints in her wake. she sniffs at the food left on the counter. doesn’t touch it. the milk turns sour when she exhales. there is nothing here that she wants.

she slinks back under the floorboards and curls around the cold pipes under the house. the footprints disappear when she does.


	30. ice

you were ice skating. now you are not.

now you are standing in the middle of a lake. you are alone. there are bubbles caught in the ice, perpetually caught on the verge of bursting. you think it is beautiful. you do not pay much attention to the bubbles.

there is a woman caught in the ice. she is not beautiful. you pay much attention to her.

she looks like sleeping beauty, if sleeping beauty had hair like eel skin. if sleeping beauty had skin like dried fruit. if sleeping beauty slept with her eyes open.

her eyes are like pearls. you have never seen pearls in a freshwater lake before. you suppose you still haven’t. you also have never seen a person caught in the ice before. it makes you sick.

you lick your chapped lips. suddenly your skates feel too tight. without thinking, you slide back an inch.

the woman’s eyes flicker to your face.

you freeze. her pearl eyes track your every move. the blood in your veins turns to ice water. then it turns to pure ice.

far, far below, something shifts.

under your feet, the ice cracks.


	31. laundry

there are eyes staring at you from the laundry room, and you can’t stand it.

it hadn’t always been like this. you work up the courage to go down. the stairs squeak as you descend. you pretend it isn’t too loud.

 you grab the detergent. you open the washing machine door.

something falls behind you. you swivel so fast it feels like your neck should snap. your heart pounds so loudly it feels like the house should echo with the beat of it. there are sirens in your ears.

you can feel it. the eyes on you. you can’t see them—the basement is too dark, the light not nearly bright enough, you dread the day the bulb dies—but you can _feel_ them.

nothing happens. you take in a shuddering breath. your heart slows.

somewhere in the dark, a broom falls.

you rush back upstairs. you shut the door behind you.

the laundry pile grows.


	32. salt

it’s a hot day, and while you don’t love the ocean, you like sticking your feet off the end of the pier to cool off. the water is sweet around your ankles, and the wood is hot under your shorts. you kick your feet every now and then to splash seaweed away. that stuff is gross.

there are hotdog vendors on the boardwalk and children begging their parents to go in the water further down the beach. every now and then someone jogs by with a dog. the beach has seen better crowds on hotter days, but you kind of like it like this.

a seagull swoops too close to your head. you duck your head to avoid its wings and spot a swimmer surfacing near one of the support beams for the pier.

she looks friendly, so you wave. she looks up and waves back. 

you smile. 

she smiles.

you yank your legs out of the water with a gasp before you can really register how many teeth she has, how jagged they are, how brown, but she’s gone before you can scramble to your feet. 

you stare into the dark water for a long time, sea salt stinging your eyes, but she never resurfaces.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [angels](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8909392) by [Valorizer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valorizer/pseuds/Valorizer)




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